not necessarily a difference, but you may get a sound you like more during the recording process when a comp's in the picture. Also, you may get a vocal sound that the vocalist likes more in the headphones-- w/ compression, it'll "sound like a record" already, which can be a great hump for people to get over. When i'm recording drum tracks, it's much more inspiring and enjoyable to play (and thus, give a better performance) when the headphone mix sounds right, rather than a boomy mess of untreated room mic's.pete bubonic wrote: One of the lads I used to live with always used to record via a compressor, but what difference does it actually make if you do it live or to the actual audio at a later date?
I'm finding a lot of the time the vocal is too predominant in the mix and I catch far too much dynamic detail.
I'll give live compression a go though. And i'll have a trawl though the MIc Compendium to see what's good for vocals right now. joker said he though using a decent pre amp (I'm currently using the built in to my shit behringer desk) made a world of difference to his vocal recordings. Which I like the sound of because it's mad cheaper, I get the feeling he already a nice vocal mic and his pre amp was letting him down.
From a producer standpoint, it may be easier to get a good mix faster; I did a track a few years back where the singer was vibing off of his headphone mix, gave a great performance, and all I had to do was add some 8k and a bit of verb, and boom! call it mixed.
Also try bouncing mixes with vox up 2db and vox down 2db-- see how that works for you, and it can make mastering easier as well. Try spending some of your mix time with the monitors whisper quiet-- it's not a good place to judge eq or dynamic decisions, but you'd be surprised how well level-balancing that works down there translates at full-volume. In yr standard pop song, if the vocal, kick, and snare are clear down at whisper level-- you're in the ballpark.
